Welcome to The Musical Father

A Substack on music, family, and the polyphonic life of J.S. Bach

Thank you for joining my passion project exploring the family life of J.S. Bach! If you are someone who desires to cultivate both a devoted family life and a robust creative output this newsletter is for you. I will be sharing fresh perspectives on parenthood and classical music from my personal and professional journeys in both, and I look forward to hearing how you apply these ideas in your context.

A bit of background: I grew up in a large musical family and pursued an orchestral career with my BFA and MM in Violin & Viola Performance from Carnegie Mellon University. When I started my own family and found I loved fatherhood even more than music, I began a new career to reach at-risk fathers and families, first on the local level and then on the national.

I kept one part-time contract playing 1st violin with the Erie Philharmonic (which continues to bring me great joy today) but with other meaningful work and a growing family, I gradually pulled away from most musical gigs and daily violin practice. Then, one night, after my wife and children were asleep, I got my old friend from its case and played a movement from Bach’s unaccompanied violin works: the Andante from Sonata No. 2 in A minor.

I wrote about the experience in a letter to my dear friend, Michael Duryea:

There’s a peace and comfort inherent to this Bach movement, which comes not only from its simple melody, but also from its rhythm and harmony, and from the very act of slowing down to put these elements together. Nobody has managed to write multiple-voice music for a single-voice instrument quite like Bach, and there’s something special about the fact that he continued writing polyphony, even for the violin, long after it was left behind by other composers. In this movement, there’s an ever-present pulsing bass line that’s just as essential as the melody. Each decision as a violinist about a fingering or bowing must be made not only for the expression of the melodic line but also to preserve that accompanying heartbeat.

I’m reminded of the deep breathing of my sleeping loved ones upstairs, and the need to fit my creative life into their rhythms of rest and waking. Being a husband and father has changed me—my priorities, my ego, and my schedule. I fell in love with something greater than music and took on new cares and burdens. Angela’s journey with career and motherhood adds additional layers to the polyphony of our lives and we’re still learning to manage all God has given us. While the complications that arise from trying to balance and mesh my own journey with the needs of my family are significant, I wouldn’t want to go back to practicing violin all alone in the music building any more than I’d wish to free Bach’s melody from the constraints of its lovely accompaniment.

A profound calm about my present concerns settles in as I explore these bars of music, which upon further reflection may not be entirely coincidental. I’ve been playing solo Bach works since my early teens and they have accompanied me through several seasons of life. But now, with a sleeping family after a long day of work, a new connection begins to dawn on me. I wonder if, despite my career change, I might have more in common with the composer now than ever before.

I think about the emotions and experiences Bach might’ve had in his lifetime throughout the regular rhythms that accompanied his daily work. Bach was a family man too—aggressively so if you think about it. We’ve all heard he had “loads of children” from two successive marriages, but have we ever thought beyond the common dismissal that this was “typical of the times?”

Bach was the father of 20 children. And he lost 11 of them before his own death, not to mention the loss of his first wife, Maria Barbara. He wrote music that touches our deepest cares and our most inexpressible sorrows, bringing a sacred quality to everyday dances and a heavenly beauty to sacred services. But we might have missed a key reason why this depth is present and why we connect with it. We point to wars, affairs, and unrequited loves as the inspiration behind the work of other composers, but what about the joys and sorrows of Bach’s family life?

Is it possible that this Andante was written one late night amid fatherly cares and losses not unlike the ones surfacing for me hundreds of years later?

That evening began a research project that has both reignited my passion for music and further deepened my appreciation of fatherhood across centuries. One of my first steps was to create a timeline of the births and deaths of Bach’s children against the dates of his compositions, a process that brought immediate fruit. I soon became certain I had discovered an essential yet overlooked theme in the life and music of the master composer, one that could offer valuable insights for musicians, ensembles, and families of today.

Over several months of research, I crafted an outline for a narrative nonfiction work tentatively titled The Musical Father: J.S. Bach and the Polyphonic Life, structured around the seasons of Bach’s family life rather than around the dates and locations of his professional posts (the standard approach of Bach biographies). In January 2024, I instated a new early-morning writing routine that has allowed me to make consistent progress on the manuscript each day before starting my 9-5 job.

Polyphony: the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other. -Oxford Languages

As I continue to read, listen, and write for this project, I would love to share regular updates and content with you, along with reflections from my journey as a musical father. I decided to use Substack for this part of the project, which will allow you to receive blogs like this one in your inbox with added community features if you use the Substack app. I am eager to gain your thoughts along the way, and I hope you will forward this newsletter to others so they can subscribe and share in the journey as well.